SMWS Distillery G7

The nose has rum, apricot, polished wood and hints of pineapple cubes. The mouthfeel is thin with no cling. The body has pineapple cubes, rum, toffee, polished wood and hints of liquorice. The finish has rum, liquorice and polished wood.

Water brings out thick, rapidly expanding whorling that dissipates quickly. The nose gains honey and golden syrup, with hints of cherry. The polished wood is more rounded, and the rum and apricot are diminished. The body gains cola cubes and naan bread, and loses the rum notes. The finish gains a little cinnamon spice, but not too much.

A wonderful dram - the finish has lifted the spirit and added those rounded polished wood notes, which really counterpoint the fruit and bread.

One for summer afternoons.

Technical score:4.5/5

Personal preference:I’d like more than one bottle.

This whisky was provided by the SMWS in a preview session - thanks to them for that. Full editorial control has been retained in the tasting process.

I was kindly sent a Girvan "vial pack" as thanks for some photos I took of their stand at The Whisky Show last year.

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of grain whiskies, so I viewed this as an excellent kindness on their part. But it's also no secret that I'm something of a proselytiser for grain whisky, and I realised that it would be quite immoral to keep this bounty to myself! I arranged to share it with Ben Cops and The Whisky Cyclist, both of whom have kindly put up with my grainy predilections over the years. After talking about it for several months we finally set a time and location and got down to it.

The pack has four 50cl bottles at 42% abv:

Girvan Patent Still New Make

Girvan Patent Still No. 4 Apps

Girvan Patent Still 25 Year Old

Girvan Patent Still 30 Year Old

We topped this up with two independent bottlings:

The Whisky Agency Girvan 48 Year Old

SMWS G7.2 "Fascinating and inspiring"

About Girvan Distillery

Girvan is a grain distillery built in 1963 by William Grant & Sons, who also own the Glenfiddich, Balvenie, Ailsa Bay and Kininvie malt distilleries. It first distilled on Christmas day in 1963 and is the second largest distillery in Scotland producing around 103 million litres of spirit per year. (They could produce a little more, but stop distillation for two weeks of every year to clean everything.) It has three sets of stills, and uses a unique multi-pressure system that allows distillation under partial vacuum - thus lowering the boiling point, and allowing flavours to be carried by the boiling alcohols without being burnt. Clever! But this behemoth of a distillery isn't what everyone would call a pretty face. The traditional distillery image of a pagoda roof and whitewashed walls isn't the case here - Girvan is an industrial site, planned with purpose and run with precision.

Which, frankly, sounds like my kind of place - I'd probably spend hours tracing all the piping trying to reverse engineer their stills!